Free Illustrator CS4 Videos From lynda.com We have 2 great free Illustrator CS4 video tutorials for you from lynda.com. Both of these are high quality videos that will show you some of the amazing new features in Adobe Illustrator CS4.

Free Illustrator CS4 Video - Multiple Artboards
Mordy Golding walks through one the most anticipated new features in Illustrator CS4, multiple artboards. With multiple artboards, you can keep related, but separate and even differently sized artwork together in a single document. Mordy shows you how to create a document with multiple artboards from scratch, how to add, edit, and delete artboards within the document’s canvas using the new Artboard tool, and some handy shortcuts for navigating an Illustrator document with multiple artboards.Watch the Multiple Artboards - Illustrator CS4 Video (link opens a new window)

Transparency in gradients Define the opacity of any individual color stop in a gradient. Reveal underlying objects and images, and create rich color and texture mixes using multiple layers, knockouts, and cover-up fades.

Blob Brush tool Sketch with a brush that generates a single clean vector shape, even when strokes overlap. Draw naturally, using the Blob Brush tool together with the Eraser and Smooth tools.

Gradients exposedInteract with gradients right on your object. Set gradient angle, position, and elliptical dimensions. Add and edit colors using sliders--all with immediate feedback where you work.

Multiple artboardsCreate files containing up to 100 artboards of varying sizes and display them any way you want--overlapping, side by side, or stacked. Save, export, and print artboards independently or together. Save a selected range or all artboards as a multipage PDF file.

Integration and deliveryCollaborate with your team, work across products, and deliver almost anywhere thanks to integrated tools and extensive format support. Confidently design for print, interactive experiences, motion effects, and more.

Enhanced user experienceStay in the creative groove thanks to interface improvements that include on-object controls. Interact with tools smoothly, and increase your efficiency using new timesaving features and shortcuts.

In-panel appearance editingEdit object characteristics directly in the Appearance panel, eliminating the need to open fill, stroke, or effects panels. Work with shared attributes and control display for faster rendering.

Refined graphic stylesCombine styles for unique effects and increased efficiency, and apply styles without disturbing an object's existing appearance. Enjoy new thumbnail previews and an expanded library of prebuilt styles.

Clipping masks demystifiedWork with masks more easily by viewing only the clipped area of your objects during editing. Take advantage of Isolation Mode, and use Edit Clipping Path for even more control.

Explore more efficient ways of working with multiple artboards, a Blob Brush tool for intuitive vector painting, and transparency in gradients with on-object controls. Stay ahead of the pace of change — equip yourself with precisely the tools you need for today’s print, web, interactive, motion, and mobile content design.

Buy now or download the free trial at the Adobe USA Store, or buy in your country currency and language at the following Adobe International Stores:Adobe United Kingdom | Adobe Germany | Adobe France | Adobe Eastern EuropeFireworks Beta
The Fireworks beta is an opportunity for web designers, web architects, and developers to participate in a prerelease program. This program provides you with early access to our next release so that you can kick the tires and ensure that it meets your needs. Download the prerelease of the next version of Fireworks now and send in your feedback. The Fireworks beta will expire soon after the next version of Fireworks is available for purchase. New features in the next version of Fireworks include:
New user interface Switch from Adobe Photoshop®, Illustrator®, and Flash — with the ease and familiarity of universal user interface design.

Live Style improvementsNow when you update a style, all the elements the style has been applied to are instantly updated. Individual instances can break away from the style with a click of the Properties panel icon.

Adobe type engineProduce superior type designs with the enhanced typesetting capabilities of Adobe Type Engine, familiar to users of Photoshop and Illustrator and now available in Fireworks. Import or copy and paste double-byte characters from Adobe Illustrator or Photoshop without loss of fidelity. Float text inside a path for high impact text logos.

AIR authoringCreate your AIR interactive prototype directly within Fireworks, ready to be deployed to HTML and CSS, Flex, or Flash.
Adobe Illustrator CS3 Classroom In A Book This thorough guide to Adobe Illustrator CS3, Adobe Illustrator CS3 Classroom in a Book is ideal for beginning users who want to master the key features of Adobe's powerful vector drawing software. Using clear, step-by-step lessons, each chapter contains a project that builds upon the reader's growing knowledge of the software, while review questions at the end of each chapter reinforce key concepts and skills.

Adobe Illustrator CS3 Classroom in a Book will get you up to speed. Adobe Illustrator CS3 is jam-packed with new features and enhancements, including Live Color, a new environment that enables users to explore, apply, and save custom color configurations; improved integration with Adobe Flash CS3, which ensures that your vector illustrations import effortlessly to Flash with their anchor point positions, layers, and paths intact; a new Eraser tool, which lets users quickly modify objects or create entirely new shapes; a new Crop Area tool, which lets users set up a workspace so that it's automatically primed for the type of media that will display their design, whether it's print, Web, video, or film; new document profiles, newly improved drawing tools and controls, and much more.

Whether you're brand-new to Adobe Illustrator or are looking for a project-based tutorial to familiarize yourself with Illustrator CS3's new features, Adobe Illustrator CS3 Classroom in a Book provides you with the key techniques and tips you need to get the most out of this software.

SiteGrinder 2  Photoshop Plugin Review
Review by Jennifer Apple(Mac OS X and Windows versions of the SiteGrinder unlockable demo are now available.)There often seems to be a strict division of labor within the world of web design and development. Creative professionals tend to stick to the Photoshop domain, while those well-versed in scripting are left to the task of implementing their work. Indeed, the two realms are quite different from each other, to which any of us even vaguely familiar with either can easily attest.

Essentially, Photoshop is a no-holds-barred design studio, offering the artist a seemingly endless array of creative options. On the other hand, HTML, CSS, Java and the like follow strict rules of engagement, requiring the developer to take any number of esoteric concerns into consideration in order to ensure that designs are properly displayed on the web.

Turn Photoshop Into A Complete Web Design ToolSiteGrinder 2 seeks to bridge this gap between design and development. Basically, this program turns Photoshop into an easy-to-use and fully functional web design tool. With SiteGrinder 2, designers will now have the freedom to totally let their creativity loose and then, without skipping a beat, transfer their designs to the web. Bringing esthetic concerns together with more practical considerations, this program is an amazingly powerful tool that would make a fantastic addition to any web designer's bag of tricks.

So how does it work? Think for a second about the normal flow of work for any web design project. You'll spend a great deal of your time designing the visual appearance of your website in Photoshop, only to turn around and spend even more time working with a code editor like Dreamweaver or GoLive, going through the labor-intensive process of reconstructing these designs for the web.

Not to mention that fact that your creativity is often significantly limited when you're using a design program that's completely separate from the program that's used to prep everything for the web. Not everything that you design will be functional when it's translated to the web, nor will it be compatible with all web browsers period! As such, you'll often find yourself not going that extra creative mile just because you know that your web developer will have to re-work your designs just to make sure that they can be used online.

Generate Your Web Pages Directly From PhotoshopSiteGrinder 2 throws all these considerations to the wind. By generating web pages directly from Photoshop, you'll be able to spend much more time on the creative end of the spectrum, since you'll know right off the bat how well particular designs will translate to the web. No more going back to the Photoshop drawing board after getting a phone call from your development team, telling you that what you had envisioned doesn't have a chance of being displayed on the web. You can immediately visually and interactively test your designs, which permits you to then make changes to either esthetics or functions while it's still relatively early on in the design process.

With SiteGrinder 2, you can easily convert Photoshop Type layers into CSS styled web text. Virtually all of Photoshop's character and paragraph styles are supported by CSS, so you'll be able to ensure a smooth transition from workspace to web browser. This includes everything from bold and italic to paragraph spacing and alignment. Even hyperlinking is made easy, as SiteGrinder 2 will automatically turn any HTTP and e-mail URLs into hyperlinks.

Create Buttons, Rollovers, Popups & MenusLikewise, SiteGrinder 2 will convert image layers to web graphics, generating automatically the HTML needed to display your images on your website exactly where you had positioned them in Photoshop. All the basic elements of any standard website are also easy to achieve by using SiteGrinder 2 with Photoshop, which allows you to create buttons, rollovers, pop-ups and menus. Pretty much all you have to do is tell SiteGrinder 2 about special layers by including "hints" when you name the layers  simply include "button", "rollover" or "pop-up" in your layer name and SiteGrinder 2 will create your preferred interactive feature automatically.

No Tables Here  SiteGrinder Produces Valid XHTML 1.1 and CSSIt's also a breeze to create a multipage website from a single Photoshop document, by using a Photoshop tool called the Layer Comps palette. Often overlooked, this incredibly powerful little tool lets you save and name particular document states, including the position and visibility of every layer. To create multiple pages, all you have to do is make the document look the way that you want a page on your site to look, and then make a layer comp  then set up the next page and make another layer comp, and so on. SiteGrinder 2 will then use these comps to figure out what to include on the web pages that it will generate for you. It's as easy as that!

SiteGrinder 2 effectively functions as your very own web technician, who knows all there is to know about CSS, HTML and other complex web formats.

You don't need to spend precious time and money learning the intricacies of web-speak when SiteGrinder 2 can do all this work for you, leaving you with much more time and freedom to explore the limits of your creative potential in the Photoshop world you know so well.

Even if you have no prior experience, Photoshop and Dreamweaver Integration by Colin Smith of PhotoshopCAFE.com fame will teach you what you need to know to create websites that will blow the competition out of the water.

Based on the book Photoshop and Dreamweaver Integration, this 2 1/2 hour DVD ROM shows you how to plan, design and launch your website.

Combining the 2 most popular web design tools, Adobe Photoshop and Dreamweaver, you’ll learn the workflow that the pros use. In a simple step-by-step, plain English approach, Colin will show you exactly what you need to know. This one-of-a-kind guide will show you how to create visually appealing and technically effective professional web sites.

The simple-to-use interface lets you jump to any lesson with complete control over the playback. All the lesson files are included, so you can easily follow along.

About Colin SmithAn award winning designer, best-selling author and trainer, Colin is founder of one of the world's most popular Photoshop resource sites, PhotoshopCAFE.com. Colin is also a regular columnist for Advanced Photoshop, Computer Arts, and Photoshop User Magazine.